Photometric characterization of exoplanets using angular and spectral differential imaging

By A. Vigan, C. Moutou, Maud Langlois, F. Allard, Anthony Boccaletti, M. Carbillet, David Mouillet, I. Smith. 2010

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In recent years, there has been intensive research into the direct detection of exoplanets. Data obtained in the future with high-contrast imaging instruments, optimized for the direct detection of giant planets, may be strongly limited by speckle noise. Specific observing strategies and data analysis methods, such as angular and spectral differential imaging, are required to attenuate the noise level and possibly to detect the flux of faint planets. Even though these methods are very efficient at suppressing the speckles, the photometry of faint planets is dominated by the speckle residuals. The determination of the effective temperature and surface gravity of the detected planets from photometric measurements in different bands is then limited by the photometric error on the planet flux. In this paper, we investigate this photometric error and the consequences on the determination of the physical parameters of the detected planets. We perform detailed end-to-end simulation with the CAOS-based software package for spectro-polarimetric high-contrast exoplanet research (SPHERE) to obtain realistic data representing typical observing sequences in the Y, J, H and K s bands with a high-contrast imager. The simulated data are used to measure the photometric accuracy as a function of contrast for planets detected with angular and spectral+angular differential methods. We apply this empirical accuracy to study the characterization capabilities of a high-contrast differential imager. We show that the expected photometric performances will allow the detection and characterization of exoplanets down to a Jupiter mass at angular separations of 1.0 and 0.2 arcsec, respectively, around high-mass and low-mass stars with two observations in different filter pairs. We also show that the determination of the physical parameters of the planets from photometric measurements in different filter pairs is essentially limited by the error on the determination of the surface gravity.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e25a9348835be734adf4f574a176414cd6ef385c

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Citations in the corpus

Shadows and spirals in the protoplanetary disk HD 100453 (2016, methodology): “In addition, HD 100453 was observed on January 20th, 2016, as part of the SHINE survey for Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO), using the Dual Band Imaging mode (DBI; Vigan et al. 2010) of the IRDIS instrument, with dual band filters H2 and H3 simultaneously.”
SPHERE: the exoplanet imager for the Very Large Telescope (2019, methodology): “The main mode of IRDIS is the dual-band imaging mode (DBI; Vigan et al. 2010) designed to detect and characterize planetary companions down to the Jupiter mass around nearby young stars.”
Three Radial Gaps in the Disk of TW Hydrae Imaged with SPHERE (2016, methodology): “Angular differential imaging During the course of the night of February 3, 2015, TW Hya was observed during its meridian passage with IRDIS in dual-band imaging (DBI Vigan et al. 2010) mode in the atmospheric H-band using an apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph.”
Discovery of a planetary-mass companion within the gap of the transition disk around PDS 70 (2018, methodology): “The data were taken in the IRDIFS observing mode, with IRDIS working in the dual-band imaging mode (Vigan et al. 2010) making use of the H2H3 narrow-band filter pair (λH2 = 1.593 µm, λH3 = 1.667 µm), and with IFS operating simultaneously in the wavelength range of the Y and J broadband filter…”
Orbital and atmospheric characterization of the planet within the gap of the PDS 70 transition disk (2018, unknown): “2 0 2 0 et al. 2008) dual-band imaging camera (Vigan et al. 2010) with the K1K2 narrow-band filter pair (λK1 = 2.110 ± 0.102 µm, λK2 = 2.251 ± 0.109 µm).”
Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets (2016, background): “IRDIS (Dohlen et al. 2008) offers classical and dual-band imaging (Vigan et al. 2010), dual-polarization imaging (Langlois et al. 2014), and long-slit spectroscopy (Vigan et al. 2008); IFS provides low-resolution (R∼30–50) integral field spectroscopy spanning 0.95–1.65 µm (Claudi et al. 2008); and…”
First light of the VLT planet finder SPHERE - III. New spectrophotometry and astrometry of the HR 8799 exoplanetary system (2015, methodology): “The observations of PZ Tel include all the three science subsystems: IRDIS in both dual-band imaging mode (Vigan et al. 2010) and long-slit spectroscopy mode (Vigan et al. 2008), IFS, and ZIMPOL in dualband imaging mode.”
Discovery of a warm, dusty giant planet around HIP 65426 (2017, methodology): “…185 mas diameter apodized-Lyot coronograph (Carbillet et al. 2011; Guerri et al. 2011), using IRDIS (Dohlen et al. 2008) in dual-band imaging mode (Vigan et al. 2010) with the H2H3 filters (λH2 = 1.593 ± 0.055 µm; λH3 = 1.667±0.056 µm), and the IFS integral field spectrograph (Claudi et al. 2008)…”